The myth of our humanitarian tradition

A sense of historical perspective has been missing in debates about refugees, but historian Stuart Macintyre's article ("Fear of invasion has given way to fear of the refugee", on this page last Friday) does not provide it.

Macintyre argues that before the 1970s, "the government took the lead in combating prejudice, promoting acceptance, encouraging our better instincts". He refers to the admission of Jews escaping Germany in the 1930s and to the intake of displaced people after World War II. His argument is that we used to have a humanitarian tradition but have moved away from it. There has been a "hardening of hearts".

This cannot be substantiated by facts. Our humanitarian tradition is a myth. At the 1938 conference in Evian, France, which resulted in the admission of Jewish asylum seekers, the Australian government's representative said Australia did not wish to import a racial problem. Australia eventually agreed to take some as a way of limiting the inflow. Contrary to what Macintyre states, it was not the critics of government policy that were the problem - it was the official attitude.

The 170,000 Displaced Persons admitted between 1947 and 1954 were not a product of a softer-hearted government but a response to a scarcity of shipping and labour. The International Refugee Organisation had special access to shipping for refugees, and the Australian government was unable to transport the desired number of British migrants. Immigration minister Arthur Calwell acknowledged this economic motivation in 1948 when he said that only "those classes of workers who can best assist our manpower shortages" would be selected from the IRO's European camps.

For most of the 20th century, Australia's attitude to refugees was shaped by practical concerns. We did not even have a refugee policy until 1977, when immigration minister Michael MacKellar tabled in Parliament a statement of principles. These were a response to the Indo-Chinese refugee crisis and formed the basis of the annual refugee program that has been with us since 1981.");document.write("

advertisement

");
}
}
// -->

Australia is one of only nine nations with an annual resettlement program. According to the UN, Australia resettles 42 per 100,000 of its population. Canada is second with 33 per 100,000. This makes Australia the world's most generous nation for resettling refugees.

About 600,000 people in refugee and quasi-refugee situations have been resettled here since the late 1940s. More than 100,000 have been resettled over the past decade. There is no basis for assertions that the present policy is a reversion to racial exclusion, or motivated by fear of "the Other". In the past decade, more than half the humanitarian intake has come from the Middle East, Africa, and South-East and Southern Asia.

Australia's humanitarian program is expensive but generally people accept it. Because Australia can only do so much to help the world's 19 million "persons of concern" to the UN, governments need to maintain a planned system. Critics of the planned program are effectively endorsing an alternative in which anyone who has the money, connections or determination to reach our shores should be admitted.

Each year, Australia accepts about 12,000 people who have been assessed as refugees or special humanitarian cases. Resettlement is a measure of humanitarianism and contrasts with the situation in some countries, where the number of asylum seekers is larger but official support is minimal.

Macintyre may also be disputed on his claim that our response to the Vietnamese was "belated and grudging". We admitted the unauthorised "boat people" without question in 1976 and 1977 but introduced the Determination of Refugee Status Committee in March 1978, when it became clear some were not refugees but economic immigrants. Malcolm Fraser today is a champion of the pseudo-left but when he was prime minister he acted swiftly against unauthorised arrivals who had paid people smugglers. In October 1981, his government detained a group of 146 at Darwin and deported them.

"People smuggling" is the key to understanding policy since the Labor government introduced mandatory detention in 1992. Macintyre coyly describes it as "the commercialisation of large-scale movements of people", but it is in fact a multibillion-dollar form of exploitation, resulting in losses of life at sea. The gangsters overcrowd their vessels to make more profit. Mandatory detention is justified as one tactic in the war against people smuggling; to see it in terms of moral absolutes misses the point.

The desire to ensure that only genuine refugees are resettled here, within a planned system, and a determination to defeat the people-smuggling networks, represents neither a hardening of hearts nor a fear of refugees. We have actually come a long way.

Dr Barry York is a historian with a specialist interest in 20th century Australian immigration.garocon@pcug.org.au